Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.